Mixed-Use Communities Don’t Matter

There is a push to make mixed-use planning the norm as cities focus on building and encouraging “complete communities”. It’s a move away from the old, segregated planning model where land uses – and people – were regulated to constituent zones of living, working and shopping. At its core is a directive to be environmentally and fiscally sustainable.

Through mixing land uses, the basic elements of a complete community are intended to be in place to support a resident in carrying out the majority of her day-to-day activities without the need of a long distance commute. Effectively, a mixed-use and complete community is, in an ideal illustration, one where you can walk or cycle to your job and conveniently nip out for groceries and basic wares within a few blocks of your residence. Recently, however, this term is becoming little more than an exercise in branding new suburban sprawl communities to make them more competitive in the marketplace.

The City of Calgary Municipal Development Plan (MDP), which is the key governing document informing land use development for the city, defines mixed-use development as: “The development of land, a building or a structure with two or more different uses, such as residential, office and retail. Mixed-use can occur vertically within a building, or horizontally on a site.”

The MDP rightly acknowledges spatial scale as being the fundamental aspect of mixed-use zoning. Without placing human circumstances at the centre of development – and recognizing the day-to-day activities of our existence – you obscure the essential components of mixed-use design. It must first be understood within the scale of the building where a person might choose to live. That scale can then be expanded to the block, community and perhaps overall city. But if a building or site is not mixed-use – by definition – the greater community can’t be.

Suburban communities have historically been segregated by design. They were solely designed around the automobile, in the belief that this was the transportation mode of choice for most suburban dwellers. Your home was supposed to be an oasis away from the daily grind. These types of communities, including the one in Calgary I grew up in, were basically composed of low density detached homes and a core strip mall that typically held professional offices, a grocery store, a local pub and a gas station – all to be driven to. A couple of convenience stores were sprinkled about for you to stop in for an after-game Slurpee or a litre of milk.

More recently new suburban developments have had densities nudged up beyond their 1960s counterparts. This has been largely carried out through multi-residential developments placed at the periphery of the community, located at the intersection of major exit roads. This is also where the shops tend to be located, a sort of inverse of the 1960s strip mall location. At first glance – and without understanding the inter-connectivity of lifestyle decisions and environmental/fiscal responsibility – there is little issue with this scenario. The problem, however, lies in the tendency to package these new communities as mixed-use. They are not.

You can’t have a mixed-use community without mixing uses. Without the basic element of vertical mixed-use (live/work units or ground floor office/retail space and a few stories of residential stacked above) you don’t have the basis for a mixed-use community, by definition or in reality. Simply, it doesn’t matter if a community is mixed-use – even in the most tangential use of the concept – it’s just a typical sprawling suburban development of decades past with some bumped up density for community housing affordability. Calling it mixed-use is, at minimum, a misnomer.

Mixed-use communities are about options. They’re about housing options – seamlessly integrated single-detached houses spatially aligning with appropriately scaled multi-residential units. They support transportation options, in that they are developed along primary public transit corridors along with distinct bicycle lanes, wide sidewalks and pathways. By design, and by zoning, there are options to work in the neighbourhood with an appropriate amount of jobs that offer financial remuneration sufficient for affording to live in the community.

Recognizing that terms evolve as new information about the concept they represent morphs or improves, using the nomenclature of “mixed-use” without appreciating what it is, or perhaps more so what it is not, creates a hallowed use of the term that is little more than pabulum to market one community against another. If a community does not provide a resident with the ability to carry out the majority of her activities within her neighbourhood – as well as numerous transportation options to leave her community when necessary – it is not mixed-use. It is a typical car-oriented suburban development with some density pushed out to the edges for stepping stone affordability.

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